


Say Yes To Heaven

by anignoranthistorian



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Based on a Lana Del Rey Song, Eventual Smut, Lady Lazarus, PTSD, Sylvia Plath - Freeform, med student Gilbert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:27:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28493868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anignoranthistorian/pseuds/anignoranthistorian
Summary: Gilbert Blythe has failed his medical ethics course, thanks to an unorthodox professor. His only option is to work as a research assistant for the man, helping him to find scientific proof of the afterlife (a pursuit which Gilbert thinks is fruitless). After interviewing numerous people who claim to have died and come back to life, Gilbert's frustration only grew. That is until he is introduced to the works of a local poet. Writing under the pen name Lady Lazarus, the writer claims to have died and gone to heaven as a child and believes she is destined to repeat the act every few years. Gilbert becomes determined to meet her, not because he believes she actually encountered the beyond, but because he's interested in medically understanding her mind.He did not count on her being lovely. Or full of hope. Or desperate to be believed by him. In short, he did not count on their falling in love.Historical AU where Anne never came to PEI, but instead her time with the Hammonds culminated in a violent near-death experience. Rated E for dark subject matter and probably eventually some smut.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 33
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

Skin sticky, Gilbert Blythe woke to the sound of hissing cicadas, their song pouring in with the mid-June heat through his open window. Even at this early hour, the Toronto pavement outside his boarding house window appeared blurred by slithering waves rising sinisterly from the ground. Though this was his sixth spring in the city, he could not adjust to the metropolitan heat. Instead he longed for the cool breeze which came in off the sea and passed over the fields and forests of faraway Avonlea, or else he remembered the eternal crispness of the mountain air in Alberta. No, Gilbert could not bring himself to care for the way the sweat stuck to him from the end of May on and longed for the relief of home. Bearable temperatures would be his by month’s end. 

With a damp cloth, he dabbed at the skin on his face and chest, never quite feeling clean. He abandoned the effort, collecting his things for class. 

His entire walk long, he thought of how he hated to see the wilted lilacs and mayflowers, dead for another long year. He was one of the first to arrive at his medical ethics lesson, the other students coming in one by one and peeling off their wool suit jackets and loosening their ties. Gilbert stood to open the windows, his back to the room behind him.

“Stop that,” a man said harshly. Gilbert turned to see the professor, Dr. Kennedy called from the doorway. Gilbert pulled the heavy window closed once more. “Shut the curtains,” he instructed. 

Gilbert shared a look with the student nearest him, both thinking the man a bit mad to demand such a thing on a warm day. Still, Gilbert obeyed. Only slivers of light found their way into the room now. Dr. Kennedy distributed candles and a match to each young man. Gilbert was reminded of the Mass he had been invited to attend by his roommate the previous year. In an annex off the chapel were a hundred candles, lined up in steep rows, lit to honor the dead. The effect in the classroom was nothing short of eerie. 

Dr. Kennedy stood, centered, in front of the chalkboard. “Do you know what the first lesson my mentor, Father Morrissey, taught me at seminary?” He asked quietly. 

All of the medical students knew about Dr. James Kennedy before they’d ever met him. A devout Catholic, the man had left the priesthood where he had served as the personal doctor to the cardinal of Chicago. He’d left the cardinal and the priesthood after a “crisis of conscience,” or so it was said. 

“He taught me about Lazarus,” Dr. Kennedy answered himself, voice still hushed. The students shifted in their seats, uncomfortable that Dr. Kennedy was again integrating religion into their beloved science in such a way. “He asked me one question: should Jesus have brought Lazarus back?

“‘Why, Father,’ I said. ‘Who are we to say?’

“‘You’ll be a doctor and a priest,’ Father Morrissey said. ‘Are you more of one than the other?’

“‘I don’t know, sir,’ is what I told him. ‘Are you more a Christian than you are a man?’ He asked me. ‘I’m both, sir.’

“‘As a Christian, you would say the Lord does as he pleases, as he sees fit. He raised Lazarus from the dead, and so that is what He should have done. But as a doctor and as a man, should we be reaching across that great divide, pulling and dragging the rope which has entangled our patients to retrieve them? Or is there a line somewhere that we should not cross?’”

A hush fell over the room. 

“I ask the same question of you now, gentlemen,” Dr. Kennedy finished. 

Gilbert frowned.  _ Has this man never lost anyone he loved?  _ Gilbert thought.  _ If he had, he’d know that you call, and you call, and call ‘til their cold. Then you let them go. _

Gilbert stayed quiet for the entirety of the discussion, listening to his classmates debate the merits of saving those already gone.  __

Eventually, the hour was up. The students stood, lining up at the door to have their graded papers redistributed. 

“A word, please, Blythe,” Dr. Kennedy said as he handed Gilbert his paper. “Once the others have left.” Gilbert watched the other students file out. He turned to the professor. “Not your finest work, Mr. Blythe,” Dr. Kennedy told him as he gathered his own things. 

Gilbert turned the essay over, seeing then the large red “F.”

“This is impossible,” Gilbert argued. “My citations were impeccable. This is based entirely in peer-reviewed scholarship--”

“Yes, but I gave two very particular lectures directing students towards the sources that would best suit them for this paper. None of them made their way into yours.”

Gilbert was flabbergasted. “Sir, you know that I was needed at home a few weeks ago. Our orchard was being overtaken by parasites. My brother had to even hire an arborist--”

“Yes, yes,” Dr. Kennedy dismissed. “The fact still remains. I can’t pass you with this.”

“Sir,” Gilbert’s jaw dropped. “I won’t be able to move onto my third year if I don’t pass.”

“I know,” Dr. Kennedy told him. “Which is why I’m going to offer you an opportunity: if you’ll serve as my research assistant this summer, I’ll let you pass.”

“What are you researching?” Gilbert asked sceptically. 

The older man’s eyes lit up. “Heaven.”

“Heaven?” Gilbert questioned before thinking better of it. “Sir, you know I’m a second year medical student: not a theologian.”

“Yes,” Dr. Kennedy answered shortly. “Which is precisely why I’m asking you. I want the mind of a scientist on this.”

“Sir--”

“Besides,” Dr. Kennedy said. “You  _ have  _ to.”

Gilbert returned to his boarding house’s common room that afternoon, slumping into a leather armchair with a sigh, the fabric sticking to his forearms. 

“Long day, dear?”

Samuel Willams was his best friend. He was also the person most likely to beleaguer Gilbert in the entire province. 

“It looks like I need to tell Mrs. Adams I’ll be here for the summer,” Gilbert said, running a hand through his hair. Sam set down his newspaper.

“Why’s that?”

“I’m stuck play-acting as a research assistant while a fool spends a few months trying to find proof of heaven.” Gilbert scowled.

“Kennedy?” Sam asked.

“He’s a complete quack!” Gilbert said angrily. “How does he even have tenure?” Sam laughed at Gilbert’s expense. “We start interviewing tomorrow.”

“Who are you interviewing?” 

“Liars and madmen,” Gilbert mumbled. “People who say they’ve died, gone to heaven, and come back to tell the tale.”

“And I thought you were a good Christian boy,” Sam tutted in jest.

“That doesn’t mean I think you can go to heaven and come back.”

The next day was trying. As far as Gilbert could see, his prediction had been entirely accurate: a small string of the mentally unstable and bizarrely deceptive came in and out of Dr. Kennedy’s office. Gilbert hardly knew what to take note of as he attempted to sift through the nonsense. It continued on like this for a week.

“Why do you look so forlorn, Blythe?” Dr. Kennedy said over lunch. 

“I’m not forlorn,” Gilbert replied.

“Then what are you? Hmm?”

“Sir, I can’t believe I’m saying this, as I know it’s very disrespectful but I can’t continue on without saying something,” Gilbert said, staring at his lap.

“Well, out with it,” Dr. Kennedy instructed. 

“This isn’t  _ science!  _ This isn’t  _ scholarship!”  _ Gilbert said animatedly. 

Dr. Kennedy set down his sandwich and sat back in his seat, a smirk on his face. “Well these are only the examples that I’ve been able to find,” he said. “Why don’t you take initiative and find some subjects?”

“You want me? To?  _ Find _ \--” Gilbert was flabbergasted.

“Yes,” Kennedy said simply. “Find someone who's seen the other side and bring him to me.” Gilbert was silent. “Well you’re dismissed for the day. Go ahead and get on with it,” the professor said, taking up his sandwich once more.

And so Gilbert walked numbly home, not noticing Sam in that same arm chair when he came in. He began to climb the stairs until his friend called out to him.

“Have you heard of the Massacre at Cape Breton?” The man said aloud to the room. 

Gilbert stopped in his tracks. “Cape Breton?” He repeated, coming back down the steps. “Why, that’s in Nova Scotia. What are you reading about Cape Breton for?” 

“Pearl cut out a couple of poems from the paper and mailed them to me,” Sam explained. 

Gilbert took the newspaper scraps and read.

_ Had I had a mother, she might have told me that heaven _

_ Is a pale golden tunnel through which _

_ Angels call out in soft tones _

_ Harmonizing as only angels can. _

_ But this has not been my experience. _

_ I tell you now _

_ When you close your eyes for the last time _

_ Expect a ladder; _

_ Do not expect to know where it goes.  _

_ There is no golden tunnel in the midst of darkness, _

_ Only a blood-orange glow.  _

_ And there is no choir, only Germanic voices which echo  _

_ Around you as you climb. _

_ I think they’re there to confuse the weary traveler _

_ So that one forgets which way is up _

_ And where it is one hopes to go. _

_ It’s been many years now since I woke up. _

_ I am a woman now.  _

_ I make my way through the world _

_ as though I do not know where the ladder goes. _

_ I’m sitting now, across from the man who may hire me _

_ to teach a room full of girls. _

_ They are so perfectly innocent. _

_ “What experience do you have?” He asks me. _

_ “Why, I’m an orphan,” I tell him.  _

_ He looks at me queerly, as they all do once they know. _

_ “They hire the children out to work, or didn’t you know?” _

_ Sometimes they don’t. _

_ “I was in service,” _

_ I say in the way I’ve rehearsed.  _

_ “Until when?” He says. “From what date on?” _

_ “All through my childhood,” I tell him. “Until the Massacre at Cape Breton.” _

_ I do not tell him that this is where I died. _

_ Had I had a mother, I would have known that she lied.  _

Gilbert stares at the poem after he’s finished it. “The poet,” he says finally. “What’s his name?”

“Her name,” Sam corrected. “She calls herself Lady Lazarus.”

“Do you have any of her other poems?” Gilbert asks eagerly, taking a seat beside his friend.

“Pearl only sent the one,” Sam reveals. “But she says she’s published weekly in  _ The Toronto Tattler _ .”

“Can I take this?” Gilbert says, snatching up the poem and heading for the door. 

“Hey!” Sam calls out, but Gilbert is already on the street. Within minutes he is back on campus and headed for Dr. Kennedy’s office. He knocks, and Kennedy answers. Immediately Gilbert pushes the newspaper clipping into his hands.

“What’s this?”

“I want to interview her.”

“Who?” Kennedy questions. “The poet?”

“Lady Lazarus,” Gilbert says. “She’s not crazy enough to come pouring in here to tell her story, and not seeking out notoriety since she’s writing under a pen name. If you want to go forward with these interviews, I think she’s at least a semi-reliable narrator, as they say.”

“You think she actually died and came into contact with an afterlife?”

“No,” Gilbert says firmly. “But the mind does interesting things, and I’d like to understand what it was doing while she was unconscious in this way.”

“How do you propose to find her?”

He hadn’t considered that. “The Massacre at Cape Breton was…” He made a quick calculation. “Nine years ago now. She would be a young woman. She says in the poem she’s a teacher. She interviewed to teach at a girls’ school. I can find her other poems and try to piece together more information, then go around to the schools to find her.”

“That could take weeks,” Kennedy replied. “Are you very sure?”

Gilbert studied the poem one more time. “I think so.”

“Well,” Kennedy said, taking his seat again. “We’re here all summer.”

Gilbert spent the next few days pouring over previous copies of  _ The Toronto Tatler _ , finding only the bare minimum in personal details about the poet. 

_ I was thirteen when God whistled to me _

_ and I came running like a dog, _

_ A freckled mutt in need of a home.  _

_ It must have made a terrible sight _

_ with all the blood pouring out of my small body, _

_ splattered around the stab wounds and the single _

_ Gunshot _

_ Where the bullet had missed my lungs by an inch and a thought. _

_ The fire licked at my hip. _

_ I was home with God while the house burned around me _

_ But the town saw the smoke and dragged out the bodies. _

_ It was a neighbor woman who called and called and called out to me _

_ It was the neighbor woman who could not simply leave me be. _

_ And now I wait for the whistle to sound  _

_ like a soldier defending stolen ground. _

There were times when her words made him shiver. He knew now that she wore freckles on her face and that she must be 22 years old now. He began approaching girls’ schools and asking for yearbooks and photographs of the staff, inspecting the images of young teachers carefully.

One Friday afternoon at the very end of June, he crossed the street on his way to St. Agnes Preparatory for Girls, walking carefully between fast moving carriages. 

He saw as a young red haired woman stepped into the road, gesturing at a group of girls in school uniforms, helping them as they crossed the road to the park beyond. Once the children had made it to the sidewalk safely, the woman took the first steps to follow. 

From the sidewalk in front of St. Agnes, Gilbert saw as the driver tried desperately to stop his horses, saw as the woman tried to maneuver out of the way of one cart only to collide with another. Her head and left shoulder made a hard impact with the frame of the second carriage. She crumpled to the ground as people screamed and carts screeched to a halt. 

Gilbert found himself running into the road, pushing bystanders away so that he could get access to the young woman.

Immediately he saw that blood was pouring from her temple, blending with the tendrils of her red hair, her body limp. He knelt down beside her and felt for a pulse: there wasn’t one. Her body still warm, he began to make compressions of her chest and breathed air into her lungs, his body finding the rhythm they’d rehearsed in class in his first year. 

The crowd hummed, their energy nervous and desperate.

It seemed to take a long time before the woman took a breath of her own accord. Still, she did not move and her pulse was weak beneath his fingertips.

“Miss? Miss?” He called out. “You’re still here. Come back. Come back.” 

The woman took a heavy, shuddering breath before gray-blue eyes flew open. Her shoulders blades pushed her roughly from the ground as she coughed, closing her eyes again as her breathing began to come evenly. 

Gilbert picked the young woman up, carrying her back to the school. He was followed by a parade of the onlookers, the women whispering “a miracle!” They opened the gate and then the doors. A father of one of the students showed him where the principal's office was. Gilbert laid the woman on a velvet couch in the waiting room and directed the bystanders to fetch the nearest doctor with an actual medical bag. In the meantime, he worked to stop the bleeding, wiping away the flow of red to reveal a beautiful pale face dotted with soft freckles. 

Within the half hour, the doctor had arrived and began to stitch the wound beneath her hair. Gilbert watched, anxious that the man wouldn’t be too hasty or careless and leave the lovely woman with an undue scar. 

“Do you think she’ll be concussed?” Gilbert asked the other man.

“I’d say it’s very possible,” the doctor told him. “We should set her shoulder while she’s still unconscious. The last lady I did it too took a bite of my forearm,” he said with a chuckle. 

Gilbert helped brace the woman, grimacing as he heard the sound of bones and joints locking into place. 

His shirt soiled with her blood, Gilbert realized he was unfit to continue searching that day. He returned home, changed, and invited Sam to join him for a beer. 

A few days later, Gilbert was pulled from his studies by a knock on the door. Samuel opened it slowly.

“Lady Lazarus has published early this week,” he said, setting the paper down on Gilbert’s desk. “She self-titled the poem, it would seem,” he said with a sly smirk.

She had indeed. At the top of the page in bold lettering, it read  **_Lady Lazarus_ ** .

_ I have done it again. _

_ One year in every ten _

_ I manage it----- _

_ A sort of walking miracle, my skin _

_ Bright as the fictional tunnel _

_ My right foot _

_ A paperweight, _

_ My face a featureless, fine _

_ White linen. _

_ Peel off the napkin, _

_ O my enemy, _

_ Do I terrify?--- _

_ The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? _

_ The sour breath  _

_ Will vanish in a day. _

_ Soon, soon the flesh _

_ The grave cave ate will be  _

_ At home on me _

_ And I a smiling woman _

_ I am only two and twenty. _

_ And like the cat I have nine times to die. _

_ This is Number Three. _

_ What a trash  _

_ To annihilate each decade. _

_ What a million filaments. _

_ The peanut-crunching crowd _

_ Shoves in to see _

_ Them unwrap me hand and foot---- _

_ The big strip tease. _

_ Gentleman, ladies _

_ These are my hands _

_ My knees.  _

_ I may be skin and bone, _

_ Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. _

_ The first time it happened, I was a babe. _

_ It was the fever which had taken my family.  _

_ The second time I think I meant  _

_ To last it out and not come back at all. _

_ I rocked shut _

_ As a seashell. _

_ They had to call and call and call _

_ And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. _

_ The third time,  _

_ It was the handsome young doctor _

_ Who would not let me sleep _

_ They tell me he breathed air into me _

_ And then called and called _

_ And then carried me out from the street. _

_ Dying _

_ Is an art, like everything else _

_ I do it exceptionally well. _

_ I do it so it feels like hell. _

_ I do it so it feels real. _

_ I guess you could say I’ve a call. _

_ It’s easy enough to do it in a cell. _

_ It’s easy enough to do it and stay put. _

_ It’s the theatrical _

_ Comeback in broad day _

_ To the same place, the same face, the same brute _

_ Amused shout: _

_ ‘A miracle!’ _

_ That knocks me out. _

_ There is a charge _

_ For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge _

_ For the hearing of my heart---- _

_ It really goes. _

_ And there is a charge, a very large charge _

_ For a word or a touch _

_ Or a bit of blood _

_ Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. _

_ So, so, Herr Doktor. _

_ So, Herr Enemy. _

_ I am your opus, _

_ I am your valuable, _

_ The pure gold baby _

_ That melts to a shriek. _

_ I turn and burn. _

_ Do not think I underestimate your great concern. _

_ Ash, ash---- _

_ You poke and stir. _

_ Flesh and bone, there is nothing there----- _

_ A cake of soap, _

_ A charm bracelet, _

_ A gold filling. _

_ Herr God, Herr Lucifer _

_ Beware _

_ Beware _

_ Out of the ash _

_ I rise with my red hair _

_ And I eat death like air. _

  
  


“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Sam says once Gilbert has finished.

“It’s magnificent,” Gilbert says in turn. He looks to his pile of laundry, to his blood-soaked shirt and he remembers then that the young woman, the teacher who he saved from the road, was covered in beautiful freckles. He saw it when the red of both her blood and her hair were cleared from her face. 

“What is it?” Sam asks, playfully whacking Gilbert’s shoulder. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I did,” Gilbert says. “A ghost in flesh and blood.”

  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Who had known that the mere gaze of a child could make a grown man so self-conscious? 

Gilbert stood twenty feet away from the young girl with the large brown eyes which never seemed to blink, each of them on opposite sides of a classroom door. They watched one another for more than a minute as the woman's voice came happily through the open doorway, the girl’s classmates enjoying a riveting rendition of  _ Alice Through the Looking Glass  _ as their teacher walked among their desks. 

He saw as the girl tilted her head to one side. Before he knew it, her decision was made. The girl ran at top speed the ten feet to the classroom. Gilbert could imagine that she would have the attention of the room.

“Miss,” the girl said confidently from inside the room. “There’s a man outside the door.”

“A man?” The teacher asked, her voice drawing nearer. “Not Mr. Howard?”

Gilbert had not planned on this. He had  _ meant _ to go unobserved, his visitor’s pass tucked neatly into his pocket, until all of the woman’s young charges had been dismissed. He found himself nervously smoothing his hair just before she poked her red head out into the corridor. 

First she looked left, then right towards him. Jolted, he watched as she straightened out and made efforts to push a curled tendril of hair out of her face. She wore an odd expression, though it did not make him feel unwelcome. 

“Oh,” she said. “Hello, doctor. Were you….” She searched her mind, trying to find the right thing to say, the right assumption to make. “Have you come to check on me?” She finally settled on, a shy smile on her face. 

“I’m not quite a doctor,” he admitted, folding his hands behind his back. “Just a medical student.”

She considered this. Her smile grew wider. “I’d say anyone with the ability to pull a person back from the edges of death has earned the title of doctor, regardless of where they stand on a prescribed course of study.” 

He laughed gently at this. “Perhaps you could speak on my behalf to the board which licenses doctors, get me set up a year or so early.”

She put a hand to her hip, a lovely laugh sounding from a lovely mouth. “I don’t see why not.”

A commotion came from inside the classroom and the woman dipped her head back in. “Nina,” she called. “Why don’t you pick up where I left off? Yes, go ahead and read to the class. I’ll be in in just a minute.” She turned back to him now. “Sorry about that.”

“No, of course. You’re in the middle of your work day. How are you feeling?”

“It’s just a bit of a bump on my head,” she said, clearly trying to make light of it. 

“Have you had any dizziness?”

She bit her lip, an action which he could not look away from. “Yes?” It came as a question. 

“Did the doctor say you were concussed?” 

“I haven’t had a moment to go and see one,” she admitted. 

“You didn’t take time off work to rest?” He questioned, rather shocked. 

She shrugged. “If they take on a substitute to cover my lessons, their pay gets docked from my wages. I can’t quite afford that right now.”

Children’s laughter broke out from the classroom. The teacher frowned, shaking her head. “Nina is the best reader in the class, but if you leave her to her own devices for too long, she breaks out in silly accents,” she explained. 

“I won’t keep you any longer,” he told her. “But there is something else I hoped to talk to you about once classes let out for the day, if that would be agreeable to you.”

He saw as her cheeks colored a very attractive shade of pink.

“That would be fine,” she said softly. 

“Alright then,” he said, shifting his weight between his feet. “I’ll… be here.” She nodded, turning to go back into her classroom. “Oh!” He said suddenly. She stopped. “Won’t you please sit if you’re going to insist on working?”

She chuckled. “I’ll consider that to be doctor’s orders.”

He tapped his foot as he heard her begin reading again. Nearly as soon as she was gone was he resisting the temptation to peer through the window in the door and get a glimpse of her. He was unable to provide himself with a satisfactory answer as to  _ why  _ that was. Eventually he convinced himself it was simply to check that she was indeed sitting. He peeked through the glass to see her sitting primly at her desk, her book open in front of her as she read aloud to her students. A few of the girls glanced towards the door, their attention spans not quite holding up. Eventually their teacher noticed and traced their gaze back to the door, right to him. Before he could move out of the way, she caught his eye, a half smile playing on her lips with that same peony pink blush. He found the expression hard to match: his breath had caught. He felt rather peculiar. 

It felt something like the first morning after a long illness, when you wake up and realize the fever has broken and your lungs can get their fill of air if you would only breathe. 

He moved quickly away, navigating to a wooden bench a bit further down the hall. The foot tapping became a leg bouncing as he listened to her read “Jabberwocky” to the children. 

Was he mistaken? Where could poetic agony possibly find a home within this teasing, smiling girl? How could  _ she  _ be Lady Lazarus? 

He imagined himself walking side by side with her, this woman the front office told him was called Miss Shirley, accusing her of being this mysterious bard like a schoolboy accusing a classmate of stealing his favorite pen and the other child denying such a thing, claiming to not even have knowledge that the schoolboy had had a favorite, only for the schoolboy to find it had fallen to the floor not five minutes later. The baseless accusations of a boy are not so different from that of a man.

Yes, he listened as she read “Jabberwocky,” heard as her voice darkened with the speaker’s warning.

_ “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird and shun the fruminous Bandersnatch!” _

Could this be the voice he was meant to hear when he read the threatening words which had stamped themselves prominently into his mind…

_ Herr God, Herr Lucifer _

_ Beware _

_ Beware _

_ Out of the ash _

_ I rise with my red hair _

_ And I eat death like air. _

He shivered as bells rang out, followed closely by the sound of shifting chairs and the footsteps of little feet. 

_ Beware _ , he heard the teacher’s voice echo in his mind.

He stood as the classrooms emptied. Miss Shirley walked towards him, an eyebrow already quirked in question. He found he wasn’t quite ready to reveal the real reason for his visit.

“Have you had any other symptoms?” He asked her when she came to his side, leading him towards the exit. 

His question was answered as they stepped into the daylight, her feet hesitating over the concrete steps, her brow furrowed in frustration or concentration. She gave up with a sigh, moving to lean her weight against the railing as she descended to the street. She grimaced as her weight fell against her injured left shoulder and arm as it gripped the rail.

“Are you having issues with your vision?” He asked now, offering her his arm. Her small hand fit neatly in the crook of his elbow.

“A bit,” she said, frowning. 

“How can you read?”

“I make up my mind very firmly,” she explained. “I find that’s the best way to get on with things, even enjoy them.”

“Are you getting headaches?”

“Really, doctor, it’s alright.” She looked at him squarely, the whiff of a dare to challenge her in her eye, in her pose. 

“Alright,” he conceded, holding back questions about her sleep, her mobility. “I’ll take your word for it.” She continued on down the stairs with a proud smirk on her face. “This  _ once _ ,” he teased. He wasn’t sure why he did.

“You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about,” she reminded him. “Surely you didn’t stick around just to drag every minor complaint about my health from less-than-forthcoming lips.” 

His eyes flickered to them now. They were full, a deep rose color, darker than the color that had stained her cheeks through much of their conversation. 

“Well if the patient were more forthcoming, I wouldn’t have to nag like I do,” he said, his voice easy and kidding. 

She laughed at this. He was surprised to see that she led them to the edge of the road, the very one she had been hit in just days before.

“It’s rare that you hear a man admit that he nags,” she said, looking both ways before putting a foot into the busy road before he was ready. He found his right hand had moved protectively to the small of her back. Again, he searched for a way to justify his sudden, familiar action. He settled on the notion that she needed extra support, concussed as she was, though, again, he was not entirely satisfied by this explanation. 

With her feet firmly planted on the pathway that led into the city park, Gilbert removed his hand. He was immediately filled with worry that his touch had been misinterpreted as something other than a medical professional’s justified assistance. From beneath his lashes, he chanced a look at her. Her cheeks had gone beyond a petal pink now and burned crimson: he feared his may very well match. He put some distance between them. 

“Oh,” she said, looking down the path to where a young man with a thick mustache stood waiting for his dalmation to finish sniffing the base of a tree. “There’s Jasper.” She walked ahead now, approaching the fellow as a sinking feeling found its place in Gilbert’s chest. “Hello, Jasper!” She called out.

Both man and dog turned their attention to the approaching woman, the animal stepping forward on its leash. The fellow extended his hand, but in the moment she should have taken it, she ducked to the ground, landing on her knees to scratch behind the dog’s ear. Gilbert stayed back.

“Has he been feeling better?” She asked the man as the dog licked at her hands. “Last time you said he’d been turning his nose up at his food.”

“He’s eating again,” the man said shortly, put out by her refusal to take his hand. “Will I get your name this time?” He asked.

Gilbert had to hide his laugh. It only took him a moment to remember that he himself had not been asked his name or been offered her Christian name. This sombered his mood dramatically. 

Instead of answering, she whistled sweetly at the pet, his tail thumping happily on the pavement. 

“Miss?” The man urged.

“Oh,” she said, looking at him now. “I’m dreadfully sorry. You see, I’m concussed.” She stood then, brushing off her hands. “I must be getting on. Doctor?” She called back. Gilbert took this as his cue. He hurried over to meet her, offering her his arm. “Goodday,” she said sweetly to the man as he watched her walk away, slack jawed. 

“You’re very good at putting that fellow off,” Gilbert commented when he was out of earshot. 

“Have you ever heard men say: ‘you can’t have something for nothing?’” She asked him. “That man has taken the saying to heart, that’s why he bought sweet Jasper. He thinks he’ll reel in young women like prize trout with his dog, which frustrates me to no end. Besides: I don’t believe pets truly belong to their owners. He has no more right to Jasper’s affection than I do.” 

Gilbert laughed at this. “I don’t think you’ll be of the same opinion should you make the acquaintance of, say, an adventurous kitten. One day you’ll be walking down the street and you’ll see  _ your _ pet curled up on someone else’s lap instead of coming when you called. Or do you think you’ll be unbothered by that?” He teased. 

She pursed her lips. “I see how you put off the topic you actually came to speak to me about with all your teasing, doctor. But, no matter: you’re a worthy enough opponent in the game of jest.”

“I’m Gilbert Blythe,” he told her then. “Just in case you intended to doom me to the same fate as that fellow.”

“You’re bold!” She said as she turned to face him. Unfortunately for her, her balance was off and her right foot gave way beneath her, her knees crumpling. He took hold of her elbows before she could fall to the ground, taking the opportunity to lead her over to a park bench.

“Thank you,” she muttered under her breath. He was unsure if it was embarrassment or frustration which affected her tone. 

“Are you very sure you can’t take time off from work?” He asked gently. 

“I’m trying to save,” she told him. “I’m hoping to…” She thought better of revealing her plans. “Nevermind. But I do need a steady income.”

“I might be able to help,” he told her quietly. She looked up to him, her eyebrows pulled together in something of a look of horror. “It’s nothing… untoward,” he said quickly. “But you would need to be very honest with me regarding what I’ve come to talk to you about.” Her expression remained tense.

“What have you come to talk about?” She asked, working to keep her tone even. 

“I’m… well I told you, I’m a medical student,” he began. “I’m assisting a professor with a project of his this summer.”

“What sort of project?” She asked, voice sceptical. 

“The professor, he’s…” Gilbert felt absurd describing this pursuit of heaven to this woman. “He’s studying the moments after death, if there’s any consciousness that lives on.”

The corner of her lip twitched. “Like… heaven and hell?” Her words came as a whisper. 

“Yes,” Gilbert confirmed. She looked off into the park towards the rose garden. 

“How could I help with something like that?” 

He swallowed hard. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “There’s been a local writer publishing poetry in  _ The Toronto Tattler  _ lately.” He watched her face pale. Gilbert reached into his jacket pocket and removed the poems, extending his hand to offer them to her. She did not take them. This small act of non-cooperation only made him more uneasy. “The writer-- the poet, she… speaks of death.”

“Hardly an unusual topic for writers,” she commented. Everything she said now was so breathy, he could barely make out the meaning of each word. 

“She writes in first person, saying she died and… saw the other side, before being retrieved, pulled back to Earth by onlookers.” Miss Shirley took the poems now. She stared blankly at them. “She says it's happened multiple times, but she published a poem just this week about the most recent occurrence, of how she was revived by a doctor in the street. She calls herself Lady Lazarus.”

With her gaze still fixed firmly on the papers on her lap, she asked him: “What is it that you want?”

“I want to speak to you about what it’s like to die,” he said softly.

Her expression hardened, the softness of her lips and cheeks becoming like glass. “I don’t speak about that freely.”

“As I said, there would be compensation--”

She grew angry at this suggestion. “You seem to have read the poems, so you should know that there is a charge, a large charge, I believe I said. And it cannot be met monetarily.”

“Well what is it that you need?” He asked desperately. She looked at him, disgust clear on her face.

“What would you need to speak openly to strangers about the worst day of your life? To allow your worst living nightmares to come crawling back after you’d worked for very nearly a decade to defeat them?” She asked harshly.

He was reminded immediately of his father’s death, of the afternoon he told Mary she would die in a matter of days. His muscles tensed. 

“Who says we have to be strangers?” He said, working to fix a smile onto his face. “We got on well enough before all this. Could we not be friends?” 

She looked at him queerly. “Friends?” She echoed. 

“How about a truce?” He offered. “You wouldn’t need to say anything to me until you felt comfortable enough to do so. I know you say monetary compensation isn’t enough, but I would be more than happy to arrange it for you. You  _ really  _ shouldn’t be working as you are right now.”

“Well…”

“Doctor’s orders,” he told her. Her expression softened. “Truce?”

That same half-smile came back to her then. “Spell it,” she said simply.

“What?” He laughed.

She batted at him playfully. “Would you question your own schoolmistress? Spell ‘truce,’” she said again.

“T-R-U-C-E,” he said with a grin.

“Very good, Dr. Blythe.”

“Really,” he told her. “Call me Gilbert.”

“Gilbert,” she said with a solemn nod. 

“And what should I call you?” He asked her. “Miss Shirley?”

She bit her lower lip again. He wondered if he would ever become less fascinated by the color they became. “I’m Anne,” she said finally. “And how would you spell  _ that _ ?” It came like a dare.

He looked her over carefully, making his decision. “A-N-N-E.”

She beamed at this. “I believe this may be the start of the most magnificent friendship.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello to everyone who decided to stick with this! 
> 
> I hope you're still enjoying the story, and I hope you can forgive me for allowing them to flirt with each other right off the bat ;)
> 
> Best,  
> S


	3. Chapter 3

Anne Shirley ducked her head as she opened her apartment door, allowing the medical student to pass. 

In truth, she had been very anxious for this meeting. For one thing, she had never had a man in her home before, certainly not while her roommate was at work. For another, she realized now that he had  _ read _ her poems, and therefore knew that she had dared to describe him as handsome. 

A silly thing to fret over at 22, she knew, but nevertheless, she did. She could never have seen this coming, could never have expected that the handsome young doctor who had saved her in the street would come looking for her again. She blushed, remembering that for a moment when he had come to meet her at school, she had let her imagination run wild, even allowing herself to think that perhaps he had been drawn to her as a man is to a woman; that he could not bear to go without knowing her. 

It often pleased her to see the ways she had retained her great treasure from her childhood: her vivid imagination. But not in that instance. 

He stepped into her sitting room, looking around with curiosity. She watched him inspect her knick knacks and trinkets, smiling gently as he explored. 

“Anne,” he called softly. “What’s this one?” He pointed to a pine cone with four thin twigs glued to it. 

“That’s my doll,” she told him. “From when I was a girl.” 

He inspected it more carefully now. “Not very cuddly, I imagine.” 

“No, it’s not,” she said with a sad smile. “I keep it as a reminder that I deserve to treat myself to little pretty things. You know, small nothings. Things to be enjoyed in ways only I could understand.”

His brows pulled tightly together, his eyes narrowing. “Was this your only doll?” He asked, his voice sadly incredulous. She thought that he was a man who wore every thought and wondered how such an expressive countenance would have looked on a younger face. She decided that he must have grown into it nicely.

“Yes,” Anne replied, smiling to reassure him as she reached out for her makeshift doll. “I called her Dora.” He looked out the window to the street below. She wondered if she had saddened him.

“Where are you from, Gilbert?” She asked, trying to redirect his attention.

“Prince Edward Island,” he told her. She directed him to take a seat. “A farming community called Avonlea.”

“Is that what your people do?” She asked. “Farm?”

“Yes. My brother is back home looking after our orchard,” he explained with a grateful smile. “What do your people do?” It took him only the slightest moment to recognize his blunder. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think--”

“It’s not your fault,” she assured. Since graduating from university she had worked very hard to perfect her response to such inquiries, to diffuse tension and level the situation so as not to be an object of pity, or worse: prejudice. “Most people  _ have  _ people. The question just comes to the tongue quite naturally, doesn’t it?” Her words came to her quickly, her pitch a few notes higher than her normal speaking voice.

“Yes, it does,” he quietly agreed. 

“Did you spend much time at the sea, there on your island? I always wanted to go to the ocean in Nova Scotia but never seemed to manage it,” she told him. “And then of course I’ve moved to the center of the continent. As far from the sea as can be, so I’ve diminished by chances still further. But I suppose one day I’ll be able to sail across each sea and see the edges of every continent from the deck of a great ocean liner.” He watched her gaze drift to the floor, as though she needed all of her concentration to imagine it. “I so hope that we come into port at sunrise,” she muttered. 

He leaned in as though telling a splendid secret. “Do you know where I met my brother?” He began. “The belly of one of your great ocean liners. A steamship, where we shoveled coal together up and down the eastern seaboard.”

“That sounds tremendous!” She exclaimed. “Were you able to explore many exotic ports of call? I had once thought of joining such an endeavor by disguising myself as a boy, but nothing came of it.”

His eyes flickered to the top of her head. “But you would have had to cut off your lovely hair…” 

She shrugged. “It had already been shorn,” she told him. “There had been a dreadful incident with some hair dye…”

His eyebrows rose. “What color?”

“Black,” she replied. “And then green…”

“You know,” he said, a glint of mischief in his eye. “I think green could suit you.”

“Do you plan to tease all of your patients so tremendously once you enter a practice of your own, or have you singled me out in some way?”

He felt himself redden. “I don’t think I’ll speak so freely with others,” he admitted.

She smirked. “And how do you propose I should take the singularity of your applied methods?”

“With grace,” he answered, a look to match hers on her face. “And let the good doctor get to work.”

“You said yourself, you’re not a  _ real  _ doctor,” she reminded him.

“And you said I was,” he countered. 

“Perhaps I need to reassess. Perhaps you’re a sort of halfling: part physician, part teasing school boy.”

He laughed at this. “You sound like the girls I grew up with.”

“How so?” 

“I was always reprimanded for my teasing,” he told her.

“Were you cruel?” She demanded.

“No! Of course not. I left that to Billy Andrews. No, it was all in jest. Wasn’t it Mr. Bennet who said ‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?’” He asked.

“It was,” she agreed. “But I can tell, though you’ve memorized a line from  _ Pride and Prejudice _ \-- which I suspect was done to pull out in parlors to impress young ladies-- you’re clearly no scholar of literature. If you were, you’d know that there’s a great debate over the ethics Mr. Bennet espews there.”

“You’re right,” he admitted, chuckling as her eyes widened at this supposed admission of crassness. “On one count,” he amended. “I’m no scholar of literature, but I do consider myself a good reader and I can at least assure you that Austen’s most popular novel, perhaps one of the most popular works in the canon, is not the extent of my personal knowledge of literature.”

“That’s something at least,” she said with a sigh, leaning down to cradle her chin in her hand. “Do you know Thomas Hardy?”

“A bit,” he said. “I made it a quarter of the way through  _ Jude the Obscure  _ a couple of years ago on a train.”

“Only a quarter of the way! I consider that blasphemy. Who leaves a good book unread?” He smiled as her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed in ire.

“To be fair, it wasn’t my copy,” he pointed out. “The man sharing my compartment lent it to me when he saw I had no reading material.”

“Well I suppose that’s a bit better,” she conceded. “But why haven’t you sought out a copy of your own?”

“Because medical school is hard!” He said simply. 

“I implore you, Gilbert, to find time to read! How are you meant to keep up any imaginative abilities if you don’t?”

“Is that something you value?” He asked. “Imagination?”

“The understatement of the century,” she scoffed. “I am at the mercy of my own mind in every way you can imagine like others are at the mercy of luck or circumstance. Imagination is my greatest blessing.” He stared at her a moment without responding. Something in her expression flickered. “I’m sorry, I know that was quite the admission.”

“What do you mean?” He asked. “You’re at the mercy of your mind?”

She bit her lip. “I....” But it was a false start. “I like imagining more than remembering.”

She did not know this, but from this moment on Gilbert was resisting the urge to take out his notebook and pencil. 

“Do you have such bad memories?” He aimed for casual. 

She didn’t answer him right away, her eyes moving slowly across the room. “Sometimes it’s as though the room is on fire,” she said, her voice sounding faraway. “Or at least filled with invisible smoke.” 

His heartbeat picked up, imagining himself to be a worthy researcher on the brink of a great discovery.

“Is it invisible to you as well?” He asked.

“No,” she said. “I see it so acutely. I breathe it in and my lungs burn.”

“So it’s something more than a memory? Something more… visceral?” He prompted.

The corner of her mouth flickered up and then down, as though she were unsure which emotion she had landed on. “I suppose so,” she said. “When it happens, I’m thirteen. I’m on fire.”

“You’re on fire?” He repeated.

“I’m on fire,” she confirmed, voice breaking on the last word. “And then, all of a sudden, there’s the ladder and the voices. ‘Ich bin, ich bin, ich bin,’ they’d say.”

“What’s that?”

Anne looked at him: wildly, desperately. She reached across to him, thin fingers wrapping around his wrist. 

“To the beat of a pulse,” she told him. “‘I am, I am, I am.’”

Suddenly she came back to herself, pulled from her trance. She let go of his wrist and settled herself back into her seat, embarrassed. 

“Is there pain?” 

“Not after I begin to climb the ladder.”

“But before that?” He questions. “What does it feel like?”

She blinked. “What's the worst pain you’ve ever felt?”

He was taken aback. “I don’t know. All that’s coming to mind is the feeling of pain all over my body that I felt during the first days on the ship. I had just come from the schoolroom: I wasn’t used to performing manual labor all day.”

“Exhausted muscles?” She shook her head with disbelief. She pointed first to the spot beneath her left collarbone, then her right hip, then left of her navel, clearly tracing a familiar path. “These are the spots where I was stabbed.” Her hand found the area below her left rib cage. “And this is where the bullet entered and passed right through.” Her palm pressed to her right hip and slid down her thigh, but she did not comment on this. “You’re a lucky man.”

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” he admitted. “I’ve had a lot of tragedy in my life, it can be hard to take count of your blessings,” he thought a moment more. “Though I do try. My father always made it clear it was important to show gratitude when you pray.”

“I’ve never quite gotten used to the formality of prayer,” she told him. “I still long to sit in a field and think about whatever I want God to know. If you can count such a thing as religion, then I’ve always been a strong woman of faith…” She stopped herself there, her gaze falling once more to his feet. “But the unlucky one.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” He meant it.

Her eyes flashed sorrowfully back to his face. “What’s your favorite blessing?”

“Family,” he told her. “I found my brother and he found his wife. They had my niece. My sister-in-law passed away a few years ago, but I gained again. My brother’s mother and stepson came to live with us.”

“Where are your parents?” She asked gently. He tilted his head to the side and gave a sad smile. She understood. “Would you like a break?” She asked him.

“Why would I be the one who needed a break?” He did not understand.

“You just looked so sorrowful…”

“You’ve landed on another favorite saying of the girls in my class,” he told her. “‘Gilbert Blythe is the saddest, most handsome boy,’ or something like that.”

“They’d actually say that?” She questioned. “I’m not sure I believe you. That seems rather like self-flattering, revisionist history.” 

“Is it so far-fetched? I recall a recent poem I read, where the poet described a certain doctor--” he stopped himself short, realizing he was taking the joke too far. Her face fell. “Forgive me, Anne. I went a long time without anyone to reprimand me and sometimes I fall into old habits. I promise to be on my best behavior from here on out.”

“Well that would be very dull,” she said.

“What?”

“What’s the point of a friendship where one or both participants can’t dare to be themselves? I’ve learned over the years how to take a jest. What else could I do?”

“What do you mean?” He asked.

She lifted the piece of hair which fell across her forehead. “What color would you call this?”

“It’s red,” he replied. 

“Yes,” she sighed. “That and the freckles have singled me out as an easy target. I had quite a temper when I was younger, but by the time I began college I had learned to reel it in. For the most part, at least.” 

“I’m sorry to hear you were teased over those things. For what it’s worth, I think whoever insulted you over your appearance was mad: your hair and complexion are lovely--” Again, he stopped himself. “Forgive me, again.” He said. She blushed tremendously. He tried to give her privacy by looking out the window. “Mary is surely rolling in her grave,” he said fondly.

“Mary?” She asked quietly.

“My late sister-in-law. My brother used to look to the ceiling whenever I’d do something particularly… not smart: ‘Mary, you tried your best. Now I’m trying my best.’”

She took a large, shuddering breath. “What that must be like,” she said. “To wake up each day and know there is someone who wakes up as well and thinks of you and  _ tries _ .” Her hand flew nervously to that same tendril of hair, pushing it behind her ear once more. “You’re  _ truly  _ lucky: precious things are hard to find.”

“Do you think family can be found then?”

“Of course,” she said earnestly. “How could I not when it’s the only hope I have of perfect belonging? I long to gather a collection of true, magnificent kindred spirits-- the most steadfast of friends-- around me someday.”

“Aren’t you forgetting that there’s a more conventional way of finding your way into a family?” He asked. “You could get married.”

She laughed aloud at this. “Who would marry me?” 

He was unsure how to answer this. “A lucky fellow, I’d imagine.”

Again, she laughed. It did not come so easily to her now. 

“Perhaps I’ll imagine another world where that was true,” she told him. “Why, I’ve already got the blueprint: a world where the heavens open and rain glorious fire… One where I’m not wooden.”

Just then they heard the sound of a lock turning. They shifted their attention to the door. A woman dressed in lavender stepped into the room, a look of confusion on her first as she took in the pair.

“Hello, Ellen,” Anne said, standing quickly. This caused her to sway. Gilbert rose, one hand finding her waist, the other her elbow. She smiled gratefully and allowed him to help her sit.

Ellen looked between the two. “Who’s this?”

“This is Dr. Blythe,” Anne said. “He’s come to look in on me since I have that concussion.”

The other woman nodded once, said a quick greeting and then scurried to her room. Gilbert looked at Anne sceptically.

“It’s easier this way,” she said dismissively. “Ellen doesn’t know about my… memories.”

“Does anyone?”

“The woman who sponsored my scholarship, I call her Aunt Jo,” she said fondly. “She knows.”

“What does this Aunt Jo say about it all?”

“At first, she offered to pay for me to see a doctor,” Anne explained. “But I didn’t want to.”

“Why?” He asked. “Why wouldn’t you want to see a doctor?”

“There are some things medicine doesn’t understand,” she said darkly. “Aunt Jo knows that better than most.” 

“But you’re talking to me about them,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” she agreed. “What a risk. Perhaps I am mad after all…”

“So we’re clear,” he told her seriously. “I don’t think you're mad.”

“Do you have a prognosis then, doctor?” She teased.

“There are many things we don’t understand about the human mind,” he said quietly. “We have no idea what a thought even  _ is _ ! It’s not outrageous to think there are things that happen inside a person’s brain, things that go beyond their control, that are different entirely from insanity.”

“Here’s hoping you hold fast to that opinion.”

“Here’s hoping,” he echoed. 

He returned home early that day and headed immediately for his room. He laid, fully clothed, above his sheets. 

He thought about memories that went beyond memories.

He thought about what it must feel like to burn.

He thought about red hair and freckles.

He thought about the feel of her hand around his wrist.

He thought of her voice. It echoed now as twilight came over the city. “I am, I am, I am.”

  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING
> 
> This chapter will contain mentions of gun violence and attempted sexual assault of a minor. Please read with caution.
> 
> Thank you!

His handkerchief came away from his forehead wet with sweat. Gilbert closed his eyes and took a deep breath, wishing he did not have to present himself as he was: sticky and perspiring with curls plastered to his forehead. With a shake of his head, he raised his fist and knocked on her door. 

With lips slightly parted, Anne answered. They stood there a moment as he took in her appearance. Stray pieces of hair clung to her neck in the July humidity. Her ivory blouse was untucked from her skirts and hanging loose from her neck and shoulders in a way he was unaccustomed to on ladies, revealing red flushed skin which trailed from her cheeks down to the top of her chest. Unusually, it clung tightly to her chest in a way he found difficult to look away from. 

This was Gilbert’s tenth visit to Anne’s apartment.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, stepping aside so he could enter. “I was trying to sleep through the heat and I lost track of time.”

“That’s alright,” he said before turning to her. Her head was bowed, as though to hide her expression. He noticed that she had reached both hands behind her back. After a moment, he understood that she did this to keep her skirt up and her blouse closed. Strewn around the room were alabaster stockings. In a pile on the floor was a linen chemise. Draped across the sofa he saw thin cotton petticoats, barely covering the structured form of her cornflower blue corset. 

“It’s cooler on the couch than it is in my room this time of day,” she explained. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, perhaps a bit frightened. Sweat clung to her face just as much as it did his. “Could you…?”

“I’ll be in the hallway,” he said quickly before seeing himself out. 

With a groan he leaned against the wall and wondered just how much time a lady needed to get properly dressed. 

What had she been doing? Napping, she said. Evidently completely bare. Knowledge of this fact did not help him any. He had spent the previous weeks slowly coming to accept that, yes: he did in fact find Anne Shirley to be an uncommonly beautiful woman, and, yes: he was most unfortunately drawn to her despite his role as researcher and the ethical questions that such an admission led to. It was only in recent days that he came to an understanding with himself, a new way to think about the emotions and bodily instincts that arose on hot afternoons in Anne’s flat. He had decided that he would think of her as any other attractive woman who was beyond his reach, and weren’t there so many? In truth, he was not very often tempted to reach out to them as he was now, but that did not mean he did not recognize the ladies for what they were and for what they stirred in him. 

So he would consider Anne someone else’s wife, or a handsome princess, or an alluring stage actress. All of them were women he could recognize as beautiful, that he may theoretically want for himself, but that his rational mind told him he would never have. 

Wonderful, charming Anne-- his patient, his research subject-- would have to fall into line with the others. 

He heard the door slowly open. He turned his attention to her. She offered him a sheepish smile. 

“It’s safe to come in,” she said. “There’s lemonade, if that will help tempt you back.”

He laughed at this. “There’s no need to tempt me further.”

She handed him his glass and he took his usual seat. 

“Have you been writing much lately?” He asked as he settled himself in. There was little relief from the balmy weather, even inside the apartment. He resisted the urge to run his handkerchief across his face again.

“Why do you ask?” She looked nervous.

“Only because I haven’t been seeing any of your poems published in  _ The Tattler  _ lately.” He was nervous, too. He had made a general implication-- not a promise, per se, just to be clear-- on her request that he would no longer seek out her written work. 

“I hoped we’d never land on this topic,” he heard her mutter. “But here we are.”

“Why did you hope we would never make it to this topic?” He asked, leaning in.

“Because it leads to something I can’t understand,” she said, eyes finding the floor. “Something I can’t make sense of no matter how I try.”

“Tell me about it,” he urged. “I could help.” 

She looked up to him then. “You can take off your jacket and tie, you know. It’s unbearable in here.”

He hesitated, understanding there were lines of propriety which he toed simply by being alone with her like this. He had justified these at-home visits to Dr. Kennedy by explaining her concussion, but now, as Anne had essentially recovered, he was running out of reasons someone who was not-quite-a-doctor should be alone with an unmarried school teacher in her home. 

“Go on,” she urged. “I need only wear my shirtwaist, why should it be any different for you?” 

At this, he began to push his arms out of his suit jacket before reaching up to undo his tie. She smiled.

“Now we’re halfway to imagining that, instead of being stuck inside, we’re together for a day at the sea, or the local swimming hole.” He did not have any desire to imagine this while in her presence, though he did carefully file away the prompt for later, private consideration. Of this, he was not particularly proud, but felt it was better than the impropriety of revealing himself to her emotionally.

Because it was not merely a physical attraction he was feeling, he understood that now. Not just an unfulfilled wish to reach out and touch the soft skin of her cheek, or to meet her in a dance hall and have his hands circle her waist. And it was not just a lust for more than even that. He simply cared for her, wished her well, and wanted to spend time with her. If she had been anyone else, he would have written home to his brother to tell him about this wonderful girl he’d met, and, because it would have been the first and only such letter Gilbert had ever sent home, he may very well have received a half-joking response in which Sebastian would offer to send him his mother’s ring. 

And Gilbert knew that he would have considered taking up the offer.

In the end, though, he knew he would not have requested the ring. Mary’s words to him as she lay in her deathbed echoed too prominently in his mind.

_ Marry for love _ , Mary said. And Gilbert was fairly certain that he did not quite love Anne. As he had grown older, he had come under the distinct impression that you can’t love what you’ve never had. 

There had been a moment shortly after Mary’s death when he’d been tempted to forgo her instructions, to marry a woman for money and access to education and status. Like Anne, Winifred had been charming, perhaps in a slightly less whimsical way, and he had enjoyed their Saturdays together. He had thought that love would come later, with time and with physical closeness, unencumbered by chaperones or the rules of courtship, or even an ability to escape one another’s company. Such a set of beliefs (that one should marry for love, that love tends to follow marriage) had led to an inescapable circle where a relationship could have no beginning and no end. 

He was reminded of his classmates, a young Ruby Gillis in particular, who had insisted that there was romance in his eyes.

_ If only she could see me now _ , he thought. He gave a short laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Anne asked as Gilbert draped his tie across his lap.

“Nothing,” he said. “Tell me about this forbidden topic.”

“Before,” she began.

“Before when?” 

She gestured vaguely all around. “Before all this.” She then swung her index finger between the two of them. “Before you and me.” He swallowed. “Before, my poetry was something… odd. If ever I sat down purposefully to write it, I would be pulled deep into my memories. It would be as though I lost time. And then in other instances, when I’d be pulled into those memories from the sound of a gunshot or the sight of a roaring bonfire, I would come to with pen in hand, a poem in front of me, as though writing it down had pulled me out. Recently, I’ve been having far fewer… spaces of lost time.”

“You mean you haven’t been experiencing your memories with the same frequency?” He questioned, reaching for pen and paper.

“Yes,” she said. “And so I haven’t been writing very much.”

“Why do you think that is?” He asked. “Why has the frequency decreased.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t want to inflate your ego,” she said.

He set his pen down. “What do you mean?”

“I think that whatever it is we do here is helping,” she admitted sheepishly. “I don’t know why.”

“Why do you think that it’s these meetings that are helping?”

“They’re the only thing that’s changed,” she said. “Yes, I’ve taken time off work, but I always have summers off and still, the memories come. Maybe it’s because I find you so amiable and easy to talk to.”

Gilbert considered this. For Dr. Kennedy, the project may have been about finding proof of heaven. But for him, it was about furthering the field of psychoanalysis. He had come to embrace it as a tool for developing his skills as a medical researcher. Suddenly, a wave of shame overtook him: he had not considered what effect his efforts would have on Anne.

“Are you alright?” She asked him. “You’ve been… not yourself this whole time. Is the heat getting to you?”

He blinked. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I should go home.”

“Are you sure?” She asked. “You can rest here, if you like.”

“I shouldn’t…”

“It’s really no trouble--”

“I shouldn’t,” he repeated, standing up. 

“Alright,” she said, standing herself. She fell into step behind him as they headed for the door. With a nod, he left her in the doorway and began down the hall.

“Gilbert,” he heard her softly call. He stopped, turning around to see her as her body folded in and her shoulders hunched. It was as though she were aiming to protect her from a physical assault. “Have I done something wrong?”

She shouldn’t have told him that he was helping her, that she’d come to rely on him. She shouldn’t have come to the door in that state of undress. She shouldn’t have been such good company. She shouldn’t remember everything he told her about himself. She shouldn’t have blushed such a wonderful color that first day at the school and in the park. She shouldn’t have crossed the road so carelessly. She shouldn’t have published those poems that called to him like the most frightening of sirens. 

He shook his head. “It’s what I’ve done.” 

He did not look at her again, instead turning to leave. He did not hear the close of her apartment door. 

He was in his bed by early evening. How had he thought, just a few hours before, that he would be running over a fantasy of the two of them together, splashing and laughing and caressing with delicate cotton clinging tight to her skin while they bathed in some distant pond, faraway from anyone who would care? Such a daydream seemed grotesque now. 

At that moment, he was sure he hated himself.

He needed to distance himself from her. Had his family made so many countless sacrifices so that he could study for so long, and so  _ hard _ , just to lose all his integrity on an infatuation with one girl? 

_ One girl.... _

His eyes fell to the place on his dresser where he had folded his shirt, washed thrice but still stained with her blood. 

_ There is a charge _

_ For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge _

_ For the hearing of my heart----- _

_ It really goes. _

_ And there is a charge, a very large charge _

_ For a word or a touch _

_ Or a bit of blood _

Had he really memorized her words? 

He sat up in bed, staring closely at his ruined clothing. Had he already paid his due? Was that why there was blood on his shirt? Was that why her poems and her jokes and her laugh lingered for hours in his mind after he’d left her apartment? Was that why he could still imagine the feel of her blouse against his fingertips?

His thoughts became fuzzy then, thinking of the few times she had accepted his hand in the unbalanced dizziness her concussion brought her and how her cheeks burned in their turn.

_ “When it happens, I’m thirteen. I’m on fire.” _

Could he leave her to burn? 

_ I’m on fire… _

He was so fond of her. He knew that if she were faced with some physical threat, he would offer his help. He would not leave her to face it alone. Would he really abandon the first patient of his medical career simply because he could not put his own feelings aside? 

He couldn’t do that to her. 

He returned to her home the next day, hat in hand, and asked her to forgive him for his abruptness the previous day. He blamed the heat. Then he sat down and listened to her tell him about the worst day of her life. 

Some weeks later, she spoke about waking up on the lawn at the Hammonds house, which burned in the background. She said she laid strewn among nine other bodies: all three sets of the Hammond twins, their parents, and the man from the bank whose visit had preempted Mr. Hammond’s desperate rage.

“He had come to collect on the loan,” she said quietly. “The man from the bank. It was late afternoon and Mr. Hammond had spent the day drinking. ‘The time has come,’ the banker told him. ‘I can’t pay,’ Mr. Hammond replied. ‘Well, you have to,’ the banker insisted. That’s when Mr. Hammond came and took me by the arm and dragged me over to the men. ‘Take her,’ Mr. Hammond said. ‘You can’t pay your debts with a child,’ the banker said. ‘Do whatever you want with her,’ Mr. Hammond said. ‘She’s just the right age.’”

The pad of paper dropped out of Gilbert’s hand. It was now October and she had never, ever gotten near to this detail. He saw as she rocked minutely back and forth. She hadn’t noticed how she startled him.

“The man looked me over carefully and then looked at Mr. Hammond. ‘Really?’ The banker asked. ‘If it’ll cover the debts,’ Mr. Hammond replied. I didn’t see it, but the banker must have nodded. I was very frightened then, and I don’t remember truly thinking. Mr. Hammond directed the banker to the one bedroom in the little house and the man took me by the arm and tugged me along. I remember that he closed the threadbare curtains as though someone may see. It made it so the room was in shadow. I was so scared. I remember my back was against the wall as he approached me with the strangest smile on his face. He didn’t say anything but stood directly in front of me and reached down to my thighs and took hold of the hem of my dress. I suppose this woke me up. I took my knee and… well, you can imagine. He doubled over in pain and I ran out of the room. I remember that one or two of the children were crying. Mr. Hammond screamed. ‘How could you do this? Useless girl!’ He said. ‘You can’t sell children!’ I told him. This angered him and he reached for a kitchen knife as the banker came back into the main room. Mr. Hammond plunged the knife into me: once, twice, three times while the banker yelled that he was insane. All of the children were crying then. Mrs. Hammond was screaming. I was on my knees on the floor. ‘You’ve stabbed the girl!’ The banker yelled. ‘They’ll hang you for this!’ It seems he had written me off for dead. But Mr. Hammond was reaching for his shotgun. Before the banker even knew it, he was dead. Mrs. Hammond screamed anew. I screamed too. He shot her first, then the crying children. He turned to me, lying on the floor. ‘Are you fit to die?’ He asked me. ‘Or do I need to shoot you too?’ I begged him not to, but he raised the gun anyway and hit me in the torso. And I’d thought the stabs were the worst pain of my life! They were nothing to being shot. I was still screaming as he wept. He reached for his bottle of gin and dumped it around the room, then he found a book of matches. He lit one and threw it to the floor. Everything was red and orange. I didn’t see as he shot himself, but heard the gun go off one final time. It became harder to breathe. I couldn’t see after a minute or two. I was hearing things before I was seeing things. ‘Ich bin, ich bin.’ It took me longer than it should have to realize I was dead. And then the ladder. And the glow. And I climbed. And--”

It was as though her mouth had lost the ability to form words. Her lips remained slightly parted as she took shallow breaths. Her gaze did not shift but her eyes were unfocused.

“Anne?” He said. She did not respond. “Anne?”

He scrambled out of his seat and fell beside her on the couch. He found her pulse point on the side of her neck and saw that her heartbeat had sped up and her breathing continued to come unevenly. “Anne!” He called once more. “Anne, it isn’t real! It isn’t happening. You’re here, see? You're safe with me. Please breathe.”

He had no clue what to do. He was no more a doctor than he was at 17, apprenticing with Dr. Ward in Charlottetown for all his education had taught him about this sort of mental break. It was fear for Anne, for the pain she may be remembering so distinctly that she  _ felt _ it, that drove him now. He pulled her hand from her lap and rubbed it against the threading of her sofa.

“Anne, do you see?” His voice came like a plea. “This wasn’t there beneath you on that day.” He ran to open the window, letting in the chill autumn air. “Do you feel the cold? There’s no fire.” He hurried to her side again, taking her hand once more. Between his thumb and forefinger, he squeezed the tips of each of her fingers, one by one. “That wasn’t there. Do you feel my hand? That wasn’t there.”

She turned her head towards him now. He let out a sigh of relief. “Breathe,” he said. “Please breathe.”

Finally, she did. 

Slowly, she came to, letting her head fall against his shoulder. “I’m so tired,” she said in a whisper.

“You can sleep,” he told her. She moved to stand and he helped her to her room. Now she stood by the edge of her bed as he made for the door, glancing back over his shoulder to see her failing attempts to remove the long pins from her hair and to undo the buttons at the back of her blouse. 

She caught a glimpse of him looking at her and her gaze fell to the floor. A heartbeat. He walked back over to her and began to pull at the hair pins, entire sections of waist length red hair tumbling down her shoulders and back. He worked in silence and when the job was done, he let his hands fall to his sides, but still lingered there, standing behind her. He saw as she bowed her head still further. 

He closed his eyes, considering his next move. She moved her hair over her shoulder, as though pushing his decision along. He reached his hands back to the nape of her neck and began to unfasten her blouse for her, then helped her shrug out of the garment. He then found the waistband of her skirt and moved to unhook it. He watched as it pooled at her feet before helping her to pull her corset cover over her head. 

He took a deep breath and looked at what he’d done. She stood with her back to him dressed only in her corset and her knee-length chemise.

“You’ll have to do the rest,” he told her quietly. He reached a hand out to touch the soft flesh of her bicep, but then thought better of it. His hand fell once more. “Sleep well.”

He left then, walking through the long corridors of her building and down the steep staircase. At the final landing stood a young woman in a lavender coat. Anne’s roommate Ellen looked up at him as though passing judgment. He merely nodded and continued down the stairs, feeling lethargic himself. 

It wasn’t until Gilbert was on the street that he realized that, any moment now, Ellen would enter her apartment and find Anne’s bedroom door open, its occupant in an unknowable state of undress. She would know that Gilbert had just been there. He knew the conclusion she was likely to reach. 

Gilbert decided that he would help Anne find a new apartment if it came to it. He could not, however, be persuaded to regret it. 

Though they did not belong, Gilbert found room for delicate, freckled shoulders and soft, pale womanly flesh in his dreams. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone,
> 
> I wrote this while waiting for the Georgia Senate election results to come in, so if it reads like it's full of pure stress, that would be why!
> 
> I hope you're all well. Thank you for the great feedback I've been getting on this story. I really love to read all of your thoughts. 
> 
> Best,  
> S

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> This one's.... different, huh? I understand if you'd like to sit this one out. It's pretty self-indulgent. I've always wanted to incorporate Lady Lazarus into one of my fics because I just love that last line.
> 
> Another thing to note is this: I'm not actually a poet, though the first two poems in this chapter are mine. I edited Lady Lazarus to better reflect the story, but there's an AMAZING recording of Plath reading it on YouTube (I love her trans-Atlantic accent!). Definitely listen to it if you have the chance. 
> 
> The title is taken from Lana Del Rey's "Yes to Heaven," which is a pretty, light song. I anticipate the tone of this story alternating back and forth between the heaviness of the poetry and the lightness of just a sweet love song. 
> 
> I hope you like it despite it's oddity! 
> 
> Happy 2021! 
> 
> Love,  
> S


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